Make Glamour Happen

The cosmetics and beauty categories are being ethically and systematically challenged on every social channel. It’s upsetting the traditional product messaging cycle, which feels badly out of touch. In fact, our audience told us that beauty brands are increasingly out of sync with what it’s like to be a women today. To add to this, Max Factor was facing it’s own brand crisis: It wasn’t seen as aspiring, nor was it talked about – and crucially, it had nothing to “wow” in-store. Our task was to reclaim and own “glamour” when glamour was being eroded by modern life.

We believe glamour is a powerful expression of femininity, has the power to transform and is an instinct and a right for women to create. We discovered in a post-nomakeupselfie world, women are happy to look glamorous, but on their terms. For many women, glamour means completely different things. There’s no one size fits all. Our perception of what glamour means to each of us personally, is a force for change in the category.

Our campaign platform #makeglamourhappen started by mobilising our make-up artist network. We asked each artist to define what glamour meant to them, personally. A bold a call to inspire you to find your own glamour. To encourage you. Social activity focused on the what Max Factor does best: To authentically re-engage with our audience, we centred activity around the makeup process itself, by creating a pop-up glamour studio. To show you how to create glamour regardless. This allowed us to have many impromptu “shoots” shared on social, as well as more choreographed moments with talent and influencers. This gave our audience the chance to have glamour land in the middle of their Saturday morning shopping experience, and re-appraise Max Factor as a “wow” brand. Local markets took our toolkit and ran with it. They got it immediately. Our linking thread throughout all social channels and global markets was the simple but bold rallying cry to #makeglamourhappen

#makeglamourhappen is a truly global social campaign platform that allows markets different levels of effort, running for over 6 months and generating thousands of tweets, shares and engagements. Fans were able to engage and simply enjoy the feeling of being glamorous without any of the associated guilt. It allows all women to choose their own version of glamour and be bold about it without fuss or conceit.

It is no surprise that women today feel inspired to change their look. In our modern, interconnected world everyone has a lot of ways to learn about the transforming power of makeup. Be it images on Instagram from backstage looks to YouTube tutorials and behind-the-scenes video of photo shoots. Nowadays there are many different ways to be inspired – glamour is no longer set to an ideal of beauty, but manifests itself today in individuality and uniqueness.